Tom Swift in the Caves of Nuclear Fire

THE TOM SWIFT INVENTION ADVENTURES

TOM SWIFT

IN THE CAVES OF

NUCLEAR FIRE

BY VICTOR APPLETON II

This unauthorized tribute is based upon the original TOM SWIFT JR. characters.

As of this printing, copyright to The New TOM SWIFT Jr. Adventures is owned by SIMON & SCHUSTER

This edition privately printed by RUNABOUT © 2011
www.tomswiftlives.com

"WHAT’S wrong, Bud? You look worried."

"Worried, Tom? What’s to worry? Here you are, experimenting with something you know absolutely nothing about—something from another world! I’m just trying to stay awake."

Tom Swift, slender and blond, smiled at the sarcastic retort from his powerfully built dark-haired friend, Bud Barclay. "That makes it all the more interesting!" he replied.

The two eighteen-year-old youths were in Tom’s shielded high-energy laboratory at Swift Enterprises, the sprawling research and development firm headed by the young inventor’s father.

"Suppose the thing blows up," said Bud, staring doubtfully at an opaque tube which rested on a small table near the center of the well-equipped laboratory. The strange tube, about eight inches in diameter and four feet long, had been extracted from a remote-controlled space capsule sent by other-worldly beings with whom Tom had established a difficult and tentative communication by radio. Recently Tom had used his diving seacopter to recover the vessel’s sealed inner compartment, breaking open its outer hull in the process. From the fragments, he had been able to salvage this one component of the craft’s mechanism. Now he was determined to uncover its secrets.

Above the tube was a large complicated camera and alongside of it a black spherical device mounted in front of a cupped oval reflector.

"What’s that gadget?" Bud inquired curiously.

"Dad developed it," Tom replied. "It’s a high-energy-wave generator he calls a generex machine. Remember when we found the space rocket? This Eye-Spy camera could penetrate every part of it except the opaque tubes running the length of the hull."

"How could I forget?" Bud chuckled. "I’m still knocking seawater out of my ears! And since we came back you’ve talked about nothing else but working on this tube."

Tom laughed. "Okay, chum, I plead guilty. We’re just lucky this segment pulled loose when the shell split into pieces—the rest of its ‘innards’ are as invulnerable as that meteor-missile our space friends first sent us. Now I want to find out if the radiation from the generex will affect the tube in such a way that the camera can penetrate it."

"Okay, you’ve got me curious," Bud said enthusiastically. "Let’s get started."

The young inventor walked over to a metal locker, withdrew two antiradiation suits, and gave one to Bud. The boys put them on, and then each donned a helmet with a heavy lead-glass visor.

The elaborate preparations made Bud gulp. "You’re sure these suits will keep us from being fried?"

"Well, I don’t suppose anything is
absolutely
certain in a scientific experiment," said Tom with a wink. "But seriously, the layers of Tomasite in these suits, and in the visors, should stop just about any form of radiation in its tracks. Remember, the basic formula for Tomasite originated with the space people themselves."

Bud nodded, but thought to himself:
Yeah, but those aliens could be made of lead and concrete for all we know!

Tom moved toward the table. "Ready?" he called.

"Fire away!"

Tom switched on the special apparatus and a buzzing sound replaced the quiet of the laboratory. Then he set the frequency control to half power and the two experimenters watched the tube closely.

It began to glow—first yellow, then blue, then white—until it reached such intensity that Tom and Bud had to turn away to keep from being blinded. Gradually the glare faded, leaving the laboratory bathed in a cold light. The material of the tube seemed to have turned transparent as glass, disclosing its inner radiance.

"You won’t even need the Eye-Spy camera to see what’s inside!" Bud declared in awe. "It’s lit-up like a neon tube. Is that some kind of gas in there?" He took two steps closer to the table, extending his outstretched hand into the eerie greenish glow.

But Tom had taken a few steps back and was looking away from Bud and the tube. A slight motion had caught his attention. A strange, creeping iridescence was slowly spreading over everything in the room. To Tom’s amazement, various objects in the room began to change shape. Metal implements and glass flasks seemed to be sagging and drooping under their own weight! The front of a large microelectronics console suddenly cracked and fell away like thin pasteboard, and weird colored sparks could be seen dancing and darting within the circuitry. "Wh-what’s happening?" Tom gasped.

Bud cried out over his rad-suit intercom. Tom whirled to face him, and his jaw dropped in horror.

Bud was holding his hand up in front of him, the hand he had extended toward the tube.
The thick protective gauntlet was dissolving away like ice under a blowtorch!

"Bud!" Tom cried. "Get away from the table!"

"I can’t see!"
Bud yelled, fear clutching his throat. At that moment Tom noticed that his own visor was turning black! He could no longer see the generex control panel clearly enough to safely switch off the machine! "We’ve got to get out of here!" he warned.

Briefly Tom assured Bud that he thought they would be all right if they left the laboratory immediately. "But I—I feel—so drowsy," Bud said slowly. "Don’t give in to it!" Tom urged, beginning to feel sleepy also. "We’re in trouble, Bud. Head for the door! These suits aren’t giving us enough protection! Get out of here fast!"

He grabbed Bud’s elbow and shoved him toward the lab door. Then, groping ahead, unable to see, Tom stumbled into a workbench and crashed to the floor. Desperately he crawled along until his hand touched the leg of the table holding the tube and generator. Fighting to stay awake, he pulled himself up, fumbled frantically for the power switch, and clicked it off.

Meanwhile, Bud had managed to make his way to the door. "Here’s—the—exit, Tom!" he called. "Follow—my—voice!"

"I’m right behind you. Go on out!" Tom commanded. But the words were for his pal’s benefit. Bud had forgotten that his voice, coming in via Tom’s suit intercom, gave no hint as to where the young flier was standing!

Crawling, Tom felt his way to the door, where powerful arms pulled him to his feet and slid the thick, radiation-resistant door panel shut behind him.

Tom and Bud staggered into the corridor. Tearing off his helmet, Tom hurried over to Bud who was leaning against a wall, visor in hand.

"Quick!" he ordered. "Come with me!" His eyes smarting, Bud followed Tom to a smaller laboratory located near the end of the long corridor. Here Tom had set up one of his recent inventions—a device to detect in a few moments the amount of radiation absorbed by human tissue.

Peeling away the top of Bud’s suit, Tom quickly attached four wires to Bud’s arms, which were connected to an intricate panel. He snapped on the device, adjusted a dial, and watched the pointer of the radiation indicator flicker to life.

"What’s the verdict?" Bud asked weakly, almost afraid to hear the answer. Had he been fatally exposed to radiation?

Tom smiled in relief. "Luckily you’re okay. You’ve only absorbed 150 milliroentgens and it takes about 450 before a fellow’s in trouble."

Tom then tested his own body. Although he showed a slightly higher indication, it was still within the safe limit. "It’s fortunate we got out when we did."

Bud, heaving a thankful sigh, brushed back a lock of black hair and turned to his friend with a grin. "You mean we won’t glow in the dark after all? So what was that all about, anyway?"

"I have no idea," replied Tom, shaken and awestruck. "I never saw anything like it before. Obviously when the generex machine made the containing tube transparent to light, it also became transparent to some other kind of radiation emited by that gas. The way it ate right through our Tomasite sheathing… unbelievable!"

"Well, it sure made a believer out of me!" Bud quipped. "What’s next?"

"I’m going back to that lab, Bud."

"No chance!" his friend exploded. "Have you lost your senses?"

"The radiation’s down by now," replied Tom. "I must make certain the room isn’t dangerously contaminated, though."

Bud groaned. "Well, genius boy, you’re the boss. But you’re not going alone. Lead on!’"

Tom extracted two fresh antiradiation suits from an equipment locker. The boys donned them and Bud picked up a hand-held radimeter to test for ambient radiation.

"We’d better take along some flashlamps with lead-glass light tubes," Tom said. "You can bet that radiation has burned out the filaments in the regular bulbs. Probably ruined the overheads, too."

Looking like spacemen in the protective suits, the boys walked down the corridor and entered the laboratory. They shone the flashlamp beams around and checked the radimeter.

"Hey!" Bud cried. "This place is still mighty ‘hot’! Look at this reading! Don’t you think we should get out?"

"We’ll be safe in these suits for a while," Tom assured him. "The tube is opaque again and the destructive rays have stopped. But later we must wash this room down with a cadmium salts solution."

Tom picked up a few samples of the metal objects and glass pieces which had changed shape under the radiation. "Let’s take a look at this stuff in the lab next door," he said. "And, Bud, bring the opaque tube, will you?" The radimeter showed that the space device was not radioactive at all, strangely enough.

Switching off the lights, Bud followed his friend from the room. In the laboratory Tom made a careful examination of the misshapen samples and discovered that they had become extremely hard, as if compacted. "This whole thing is baffling," he said. "I’m going to call in the radiation boys."

As it was late on a Sunday afternoon, Swift Enterprises did not have a full technical staff at work. Nevertheless, after making several calls Tom had assembled enough technicians with the relevant expertise to help him determine the atomic structure of the opaque tube. After briefly making the tube transparent and radiant—this time by remote control in a sealed chamber—they were able, for the first time, to take photospectrometer readings of both the exterior and interior of the tube. They found that the luminous inner gas was unreadable, but the outer material contained a new isotope of silicon.

"This is wild stuff!" exclaimed one of the workers. "This isotope is unheard of here on earth!"

"Naturally. The tube wasn’t made on this earth," Bud observed.

"Silicon
again," mused Tom.

Bud raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, genius boy?"

Tom rubbed his chin, as he often did when his mind was fully engaged. "Don’t you remember? The transparent glaze on the meteor-missile contained an unusual silicon compound that we couldn’t duplicate. And the propulsion field around the transport capsule affected
glass
—silicon—when it passed over Shopton. And now this." He chuckled, recognizing the blank look on his friend’s face. "It’s fantastic," he insisted. "Silicon has an atomic weight of 28 and has three known isotopes; the first with a weight of 28, the others 29 and 30. The isotope in this tube has a weight of 33!"

"Is it worth almost getting turned into a couple of human neon signs?" Bud asked, grinning.

Tom shrugged. "I don’t know yet. It’ll take a lot more research to find out the details."

At that moment the phone rang and the young inventor reached for the receiver. Tom glanced at the phone’s ID panel. "Munford Trent," he informed Bud. "He’s working in the office today." Munford Trent was private secretary to Tom and his father, "What do you suppose he wants?"

Tom answered the phone. Then Bud saw his pal’s face sag in sheer disbelief. Tom hung up the receiver and turned to Bud wide-eyed.

"Tom! What is it?"

"Trent just got a phone call… " replied Tom slowly.

"From who?"

The young inventor looked his friend square in the face. "From the dead!"

"OKAY, pal.
Don’t
tell me!"

Tom shook his head. "I’m not kidding you, Bud. Trent swears he just took a phone call from Craig Benson!"

"Craig Benson!" Bud Barclay repeated goggle-eyed. "But he’s—like you said."

A longtime Swift employee and friend, Craig was a pilot who had left Enterprises for outside work as a private pilot-for-hire. More than two years previous, while working for a United Nations agency, he had crashed in central Africa. Though the wrecked plane had never been recovered despite an extensive search through the wild jungles and nearby mountains, he was presumed dead. Tom and Bud had attended his funeral service in New York City.

Tom’s astonishment was now replaced by cautious joy. "He’s alive!"

"Guess so," Bud commented doubtfully. "Or at least he’s making phone calls. Man, what a story he must have!"